Luxury in the Cloud

Over the past several years, few Internet technologies have garnered more attention and praise than cloud computing. It’s been heralded primarily for its ability to drive down the cost of running an Internet business, helped entrepreneurs create low-cost startups, and has helped fuel incubators like YCombinator and TechStars. Rackspace is taking advantage of this as well, via our own Startup Program.

But while cloud hosting has pushed the cost of running an Internet business down dramatically, it has created other challenges — namely the high-levels of expertise needed to seamlessly run cloud technologies. This is the primary focus of our operations at Rackspace: delivering a quality luxury service, which we refer to as Fanatical Support, to our customers.

“Our service is designed to be like a personalized IT department for our customers,” said Joseph Palumbo, Rackspace Cloud Lead for Managed Cloud. “Our managed plans start at under $200 a month and have 24x7x365 IT support, involving everything but software development, customized in accordance with the customer’s strategic direction.”

Palumbo’s last point is crucial.

Luxury cloud service means more than just a high level of service; for organizations, it means having a hosting provider who can adapt with you — which in turn can avoid many hassles and reduce costs down the road.

With so many complexities in the cloud, luxury management can provide a personalized solution can help firms navigate the dizzying morass of data ownership and rights in the cloud. With true luxury hosting services, organizations simply need to express their goals — in other words, play the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) — to their cloud hosting provider, who will then be responsible for building and managing the IT solution most appropriate for these goals.

As for the future of luxury cloud services, look for cloud hosting providers to find opportunities for opportunities for their customers to build meaningful relationships with each other. Cloud providers are in a unique position to help companies dealing with any of the myriad of challenges related to business in the cloud — from nurturing an ecosystem of developers to navigating digital rights issues and more. As such, the high touch, quality service associated with luxury may come to be known as an essential bargain for organizations looking to outsource their networking needs to trusted specialists.

To learn more about Cloud Servers with a Managed Service Level, click here.